


To Consummate is to Burn

by the_glow_worm



Category: Spinning Silver - Naomi Novik
Genre: F/M, Large Cock, Loss of Virginity, Wedding Night
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-16
Updated: 2018-08-16
Packaged: 2019-06-28 02:11:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15698013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_glow_worm/pseuds/the_glow_worm
Summary: Miryem, the Staryk, and their wedding night.





	To Consummate is to Burn

We left the warm light of my family’s house glowing behind us on the silver road, our hands finding each other in the sleigh as it raced down the rows of white trees. My mother was sorry to see me go, of course, but it was only the ordinary sorrow of any mother seeing her daughter married and gone to be mistress of her own home, sadness and pride and joy all mixed together, and anyway I had promised to visit again before winter ended.

 

But tonight belonged to my husband.

 

The thought made me shiver and turn hot at the same time, a strange eager flush running through my entire body. I tightened my grip on my husband's hand to conceal its shaking, and he clutched my hand back just as hard, carefully controlled strength running beneath his skin. I thought of those cool hands running down my body, leaving trails of ice-melt from my heat, and shivered again. This time I could not hide it from my husband, and did not want to. He turned to look at me with his silver eyes gleaming and intent, and there was something in them that I liked very much.

 

The winter wind was rushing full into our faces, the white deer pulling our sleigh running with all the speed they had, but even that seemed completely inadequate. If my racing heartbeat could have carried us, we would have been in our marriage bed by now. And _there_ I would finally, finally tear off all his fine layers of white leather and white fur, and unfasten all of his innumerable silver buttons, and he could reveal to me those secret pleasures that made women blush and talk together laughing when the children could not hear. Without meaning it my hand escaped his grasp and went trailing up his thigh, just the touch of him like taking a long draught of wine, and the Staryk gasped.

 

He sounded almost helpless beneath the touch of my hand, and when I glanced up at his face he _looked_ helpless, too, his eyes half-lidded and a glittering light coming into them. His face was shifting, sharp-faceted cheekbones wearing away into softer curves, almost human. His mouth was open a little, and the clear winter light glinted off the points of his canines. It made me wonder how it would feel to have them pressed against my skin, and I moved my hand up again, to the very crease of his breeches. This time the gasp was almost a groan, coming out deep in his throat. I watched him with my mouth gone dry, wanting him to an unbearable degree.

 

“Lady,” said the Staryk, half a warning and half a plea, and recklessly I ran my fingers along the stiffening length I could feel straining at the limits of his breeches. _That_ was something I knew about, at least, from the speech my mother had given me last night before the wedding; but then it occurred to me, with a shock, that there could be anything beneath the lacing of his breeches, and it didn’t have to be even remotely human at all.

 

The thought made me feel strangely feverish. My other hand was pressing against the Staryk's chest, sliding one finger and then another beneath the layers of his white riding leathers, to the flimsy silk underneath. Our thighs were snug together, flush from knee to hip, so that even through our grand clothing I could feel his muscles flexing beneath his skin as he fought to stay in control. I wondered if _he_ could feel the heat between my legs, blood pulsing wildly there like a second heart.

 

I pressed my thighs together, trying to push down the heat, to tame it, but the pressure only made the throbbing worse. Or better, perhaps, it was hard to say: the pulsing heat had spread down my legs and up into the pit of my belly, a fire that the rushing wind did nothing to cool, and the pleasure that came with it was undeniable. I was on the crest of a wave that rose and rose and would not break.

 

The silk of his undershirt crushed between my fingers as I grabbed at him with fresh urgency. With the slightest provocation I would have been ready to straddle him, to rub against him, to let him run his hands over my breasts and beneath my skirt. I wanted him to touch me as I was touching him. I wanted him to make me helpless and gasping.

 

My husband was watching me with fascination in his silver eyes, the whites of his pupils blown large, almost hypnotized. I did not know what he saw in my face, but it made the layers of self-control in his own give way like sheets of ice in the summer sun. His hand shot to my knee, where the hem of my dress had ridden up over my socks in my frenzy, and a sliver of my bare skin could be seen. I had his fingertips brushing over my thigh for one brief, glorious moment, his touch fraught with possibility.

 

But that one touch was as far as he got before the poor driver, whom we had forgot about entirely, cleared his throat and announced our arrival at the glass mountain, too loud, to interrupt us.

 

I glared at the back of his head as we flew in through the silver gates, instantly resolving to have him in stocks or whatever it was that queens did, but the Staryk only took a quick steadying breath and leaned back to his seat on the sleigh. He ran a hand down his front, instantly smoothing into place what I had disheveled, sharp lines of ice redrawing themselves on his face. In a moment he looked as unruffled as ever.

 

I doubted very much that I looked so unsuspicious. I had smoothed out my skirt, but I could feel my cheeks glowing red when the Staryk handed me down from the carriage and into the grove.

 

They were all waiting for me there, my new friends and subjects, turned out in their best finery to celebrate their king taking home a wife. Staryk children ran laughing between the great circles, and everywhere there were smiles; not mocking, as they had been when I was first brought here, but welcome and glad. Crystal drops dangled from wrists and the outstretched limbs of trees, and silver gleamed from every throat. The white leaves of the trees rustled and whispered together, somehow excited themselves, and the snow fell slow and dreamlike over it all, winter’s heart beautiful and glittering before me.

 

Among the circles of trees there were great platters of food, laid out of venison and fish with dipping sauces around them arranged by pungency, slices of white-fleshed fruit and flavored ice arranged in the shape of a swan, delicate bird eggs soaked in brine until their yolks were nearly red, served with pink slices of something pickled and vinegary, skewers of the small, raw hearts and livers of wild birds, slathered in the pale honey of the winter lands, bottles of dark blue wines standing in clusters, and bowls of head-swimming liquor as clear as ice-melt; the bounty of the mountain come back again with the winter, as promised, and I realized with a start that we were meant to stay and be feasted, when all I really wanted was a door that locked, and was sturdy enough to press my Staryk up against it.

 

But I couldn’t really keep scowling when Rebekah came running up to me with her arms spread, and Flek and Tsop and Shofer following close. I bent down to hug her close, and when I let go she took my hand and led me up to a table at the center of the grove, with linen all in white and two silver chairs greater than the others right in the middle.

 

If either of us ate, I do not think we tasted it, despite the splendor of the food. My leg was twined with his beneath the table, not rubbing or stroking, but simply letting the weight of my knee rest against his. When he finally moved his leg back against mine, all the hairs on my arms stood on end. A number of Staryk came up to our grand table and presented themselves formally to us, as if we had not spent the past few months working side by side rebuilding the mountain. I managed to speak the right words, or at least everyone seemed to go away satisfied, but I certainly didn’t remember what it was that I said. Beneath the table laden with sweetmeats and snowy linen, my husband was moving his fingers along my thigh in a slow, agonizing circle, turning my thoughts into so much dust and air. I had felt his gaze resting upon me whenever I wasn’t looking at him, but I wasn’t prepared to see his eyes when I finally shot him a burning glance of my own: his eyes were glittering like they had the day we had faced down the demon, like stars caught in a silver net, like new snow in the light of a full moon. I was speechless for a moment, and my only consolation was that he was, too, his words running abruptly dry in the middle of a response to one of the nobles of the first rank.

 

This was, I felt meanly, a just outcome. Now— _now_ —he felt that he had to give me the feast and welcome that a Staryk queen warranted, with no regard for what this Staryk queen in particular might hunger for more. It almost made me want to see him suffer a little longer, if only that didn’t mean that I would have to suffer along with him.

 

He replied to the others a little disjointedly, after that—we both did, in fairness. I would move my leg against his, beneath the table, and he would curl his finger around the end of my braid where it hung down between us and pull at it a little, so that I felt the pressure at the base of my scalp. It made me shiver and throw more burning glances at him, so that by the time he had finally closed his hand firmly around mine, we were both well and truly unsteady, and likely useless to anyone around us.

 

It was perhaps still a little too early for propriety when he and I rose from the grand table and left the grove. There were carefully hidden grins among the crowd that suggested that if the Staryk were capable of hooting, they would have been. But that didn’t matter—how could it? What mattered were the doors of the mountain opening before us, and the passage up and up going by like a fast sleigh ride, as if the mountain itself were as eager as we were. The doors of my room opened before me, and I pulled him in after me. I was nearly toppling him over, but he caught his balance against the wall, and leaning down from his great height put his hands on either side of my face.

 

When he kissed me, I felt it go through my body like the cold sting of a winter’s day. My lips stung, but I clung on to his shoulders with everything I had, desperate and aching. I had never imagined being kissed like this before. Kissing was something the other children in the village would dare each other to do when their parents couldn’t see, yet another game I wasn’t allowed to play. But I was glad, now, that I had never thought to do it before; anything else would have paled, and I didn’t want the comparison. We were kissing with our entire bodies, with no air between us, our chests pressed together as if the string between our hearts was pulling tight.

 

He lifted me up in his arms as if I weighed nothing at all, and I felt that way, too: lighter than air, euphoric, floating. My hands were grabbing at his collar, his shoulders, anything I could use to pull him closer to me. I gripped fistfuls of his long white braids and he immediately moaned at the sensation, mouth opening wonderfully below mine. When my eager tongue flicked inside exploring, his mouth was soft and wet. It felt so natural, so human, that for a moment I did not realize what was amiss, and then I jerked back and looked at him accusingly.

 

“What are you _doing_?” I asked, my tone sharp; I couldn’t decide whether to be exasperated or concerned.

 

The Staryk looked back at me. I had never seen him like this before; eyes gone so pale they nearly looked blind, hair twisting messily out of his neat braids, a smear of wet on his lip from where I had kissed him. It look him a moment to manage to respond, and when he did his voice had gone deep, like the thunder that brought the snow.

 

“I thought it might please you,” he said. “I see now that I have erred.”

 

“If I wanted a mortal husband, I would have married one,” I said, exasperated in truth now. “Give me you, and all of you, so I can have the pleasure of knowing who my husband is on my own wedding night—”

 

I was cut off. He was kissing me again, and this time there was nothing soft about his mouth. There was something unyielding about his lips, his tongue, like ice that did not melt. If anything, _I_ was the one in danger of melting; I twisted in his arms, panting against his mouth, pulling on his hair in wordless desperation. It was a relief when he crossed swiftly into the curtained bower and laid me down on the bed, crawling up after me with his knees between my legs. I drew my calves up to wrap around his ribs, his weight against my thighs welcome and tantalizing at once.

 

Our clothes were horribly obtrusive, coming in between his skin and mine wherever I tried to touch him. I was getting in the way of myself, tugging his clothes this way and that, unwilling to stop kissing him long enough to get them off properly. Finally he had to say, gasping, “Lady, allow me—” before I let him draw back and undo the gold laces that ran down my back and sleeves.

 

His fingers were deft, but I could feel them trembling ever so slightly against my back, feather-light touches that raised goosebumps on my skin. I couldn’t stay still with this yearning in my stomach and his hands on me. I shifted, and the dress fell down off my shoulders, pooling around my hips.

 

I stood up slowly on the bed, letting the dress slip down around the rest of me. Somehow, despite all my yearning and frenzy, I hadn’t anticipated the reality of being naked in front of _him_. In front of my husband, the Staryk king, whom I had bargained with and tricked and fought alongside and married. I could feel his gaze on my naked back. I knew he could see the curve of my spine, the outline of my ribs. I was skinny from too many hungry winters—winters that _he_ had sent, I knew, but I loved the weight of his gaze anyway. I turned to meet it, stepping out of the puddle of my gown.

 

He rose onto his knees, the better to look at me. His eyes travelled along every inch of my skin. There was a blatant hunger in his eyes, a hunger that I was bursting to satisfy. I wanted to be devoured. The thought inflamed me. But he was caressing me with only the look in his eyes, as if he could be satisfied with that alone.  

 

Well, I couldn’t be satisfied, and I had no intention to be. I bent to kiss him again, ardently, and this time his hands came up to my hips and stayed there, skin meeting skin.

 

He was as cold as ever, but I burned. My skin was too hot, even in this land of winter, so that his hands, which never felt more than ordinarily cool to me anymore, were soothingly cold. I leaned into his touch, gasping a little with the shock of his cold against my superheated skin. It reminded me of all that he was; the one who calls the white road, the hunter that rides with the blizzard, the lord of grey skies and white death: he was the king of winter and my husband, and would never be any other.

 

We managed to get his coat off—rather in spite of my eagerness than because of it—and fell down together into the bed, laughing a little. Or at least, I was laughing, ordinary human laughter that escaped me between kisses. He was holding a soft, secret smile against his lips, which became a purring, silvery kind of laughter as I laid kisses down his open, pale neck. I began to undo his many tiny buttons, laying a kiss in place of each one as I went. He moaned as I went down past his sternum, throwing his head back into the sheets. His white braids cascaded behind him and pillowed him.

 

I was unbuttoning faster now, made clumsy by the tantalizing open stretch of his pale chest. I had reached the flat hard pane of his stomach, and I could not resist pressing my hands against it. But I did not linger. I was impatient, and there would be plenty of time to admire him at my leisure. My hands flew down his shirt, undoing us both, and now I could see more than the glimpse I had so long ago, when my marriage rights had been something to dread. His open shirt fell down around his shoulders and slid down his arms as he lifted himself onto his palms. I could see the swell of muscle in his arms, and the hard strength in his lean, pale chest.

 

I had never seen so much of a man before. His shirt slipped completely off as he reached for me, one hand sliding around the small of my back and cupping it. He was holding me like I was carved of ice or glass, something delicate and too wondrous to risk breaking. Then our eyes met, and his grip suddenly tightened around my back and my wrist—not painfully, but just hard enough to be exhilarating—and he tumbled me over flat on my back, and just like that I was flesh and bone again.

 

My blood was pounding against my skin, and the slickness and emptiness between my legs was almost unbearable. My Staryk was running his hands down my body, too slow, and I squirmed, panting, wanting only for his hands to be _lower_ , to touch me in places I had only vaguely ever imagined a man touching me. When his hands finally settled on my thighs and pushed them apart, I could barely think for pleasure.

 

But there are still that slick, moist heat in the center of me, and that had been left untouched. I was squirming for it, needy and hot, and I felt just one finger slide into me, a cold, startling intrusion. He and I both moaned at the touch.

 

“You _burn_ ,” said my Staryk, gasping, but before I could muster any concern, a second finger slid inside of me.

 

It went in without any resistance at all, and he began to rub his fingers against my inner wall in long, sure strokes. With each stroke I could feel a pressure building up within me, like a river being held back by a dam, until I could only gasp and moan. He was gasping too, at the unexpected heat of my arousal, so much warmer than my skin. But they weren’t gasps of pain.

 

I wondered if it was considered improper, in this land of winter, to enjoy the heat of human women; if that was as perverse and strange as preferring the cold hands of a Staryk would have been in the sunlit lands. And then I had very little more room in my mind for thought; he had lowered his mouth down onto me, and I discovered that his tongue could kiss more than just my mouth.

 

His fingers continued to work within me even as his tongue swirled maddening circles; they flexed inside me, curling as if to beckon something. My body responded swiftly, eagerly, to the summons; my hips were bucking on their own, and a strange shivering had overtaken me, overwhelming every sense I had. The world was diminishing. All that existed was him and I and the bed we were on. Nothing was real except for his fingers moving inside me, and his tongue on me, stroking and licking and rubbing until I could feel a wild pleasure in every tendon and muscle. My legs were shaking, but the sensation kept building up and up inside me, until abruptly something broke loose and I was swept away on a current of pleasure.

 

I was panting, spent, my limbs suddenly langorous and slow. My Staryk sat up and looked at me with unutterable satisfaction.

 

“Lady,” he said, almost reverently, but I didn’t want reverence particularly. I wanted to do it again.

 

I scrambled up after him. His breeches were still on, an unutterable, abominable oversight. I attacked them feverishly while I kissed him again.

 

I suppose it was some sort of miracle that I did manage to get them off, in the end: we had managed to get thoroughly tangled up in each other. I was lost for breath, kissing my Staryk until stars imploded before my eyes and then pulling back to let him nuzzle at my throat, my hair, breathing in deep joyful lungfuls of air. There was no more fabric between us, nothing constraining him, none of his lushness of white silk and white furs to remind him of stillness and restraint. When he moved against me now, I could feel the hard length of--something dragging across my skin, leaving a wet trail up the length of my thigh, and his gaze when it met mine was hungry. My heart was beating like a little bird against my chest. Exhilaration ran through me, accompanied by a small, ordinary kind of fear. I could hear my mother's voice warning me that it was painful, sometimes, but that wasn't what made my breath come fast. I knew he wouldn't hurt me, but this was a door that I could only step through one way. This would be my only wedding night. From now on I would be a wife; his wife.

 

And then I couldn't be afraid anymore. I was the daughter of Josef and Rakhel Mandelstam, a moneylender and a queen, a girl who could turn silver into gold before high magic made it true. I wouldn't fear my marriage bed or what it sealed between us. I had the Staryk king's hand and his heart, and what I had won, I had fought for. My hand slid down between us, groping, and found the shaft between his legs.

 

It was as slick as I was. Encouraged, I moved my fingers lightly up and down the length. By the way the Staryk gasped, I guessed that I had managed to do something right. More of the slickness was beading up as I moved my hand, gripping more tightly now, pumping more surely as I went. I still couldn't see what my hand was doing, lodged as it was between out bodies. I could only see the expression on my Staryk's face, undone and naked before me.

 

We were swiftly leaving behind the realm of what my mother had taught me. I was fairly certain that human men were not meant to be slick all over their shafts, but I scarcely had cause to know. And my mother had certainly not taught me about the terrible longing between my legs, a pulsing emptiness that begged to be filled.

 

The Staryk keened into my neck, just where it met my jaw, a sound like the wind seeking through trees rimed in ice, and I shivered at the sound. I was aching for him: aching and needy and wet. With a trembling hand I pushed him back, still gripping him with the other, and looked at him.

 

In the light of the glittering mountain I could see his white-pale skin, gleaming a little as ice does when its wet, and his eyes gone nearly white with only a thin rim of silvery blue around the pupil. His chest was heaving rapidly, and with a start I realized that he was panting open-mouthed, white teeth glinting between pale lips. My eyes traveled downwards, irresistibly drawn to what I held in my hand.

 

It looked normal; not that I knew what normal looked like, of course, but it didn't seem so outlandish a shape. Long and straight, and slightly curving, and just a little thicker than I could close my fingers around but narrow at the tip. 'I suppose he's not cut' had been all my mother had said on the topic, but I didn't know how one could tell. It was as pale as the rest of him.

 

I swallowed, looking at him. The ache between my thighs had seemed to double and quadruple just by seeing it. How many nights had I dreaded this very moment? I knew, of course, that I had been very sensible then, but just now it seemed more like folly. I had missed so many nights of pleasure. I found words, eventually.

 

"You owe me," I said hoarsely. I was aware they were the first words I had spoken in a while.

 

The Staryk's gaze snapped towards mine, his head coming back proud, offended. Then he seemed to relent a little, and smiled his glittering smile.

 

"Then tell me, Lady, how I have incurred my debt," courtly as anything, even naked with my hands around him. "I shall surely make amends."

 

"I asked you no questions, those six months I was in your glass mountain," I said. "You owe me six months’ worth of my rights."

 

He smiled a little wider now, a clear winter light shining out of his eyes. "I cannot make half a year of nights into one night," he said smoothly.

 

"You can give half a years’ worth of pleasure in one," I replied.

 

His hands moved slowly over my bare legs. The little hairs on my skin prickled and stood up at his touch. "And what will you give me, Lady, should I complete such a task?"

 

I slid my knees apart for him, guided him slowly forward with my hand until the very tip of his shaft was at my very entrance, rubbing against me. The sensation made me shiver and moan. It felt so strange, yet so familiar, as if my body knew very well what it was about. The insides of my thighs were so slick that I felt dirty even thinking of the mess, and he wasn't much better off. I shifted my hips, experimentally, and the drag of his shaft between my legs was so sweet that I thought I might pass out. I wanted him inside of me, wanted it more badly than words could easily say. But there was a bargain to strike first.

 

"Something only I can give you," I said, holding his gaze. "A gift that will be divided between us and yet be whole. A heart to hold beneath my own. ”

 

I had never thought of it, whether I would like a child or not. That was the way of it: that if I should ever find a man to love and find worthy, that we should make a child together that would be a child of Israel. It was one thing that would follow naturally from another, like a well-worn path in the snow. But now, suddenly, I felt an active desire, an intense longing in my heart for a child: one with long white hair held back in smart braids, who would live in the land of winter but always have our prayers in her heart. A child of my body and the Staryk's, together.

 

His eyes widened, his hand coming up and cupping my face. His lips parted as if to speak, to let something loose from his heart and out into the air, but that was not his way. My Staryk didn't have to tell me that accepted my terms. His body spoke for him. Slowly, slowly, he shifted his hips forward, bringing his hands around the small of my back to steady me. I fell back into the bed, letting his arms come around me and envelop me. His hair fell down around us, loosened from their braids. There was only he and I within that white curtain. His breath was coming fast; I could feel it on my face like a cool wind. He was mine, my Staryk, and I wanted his body to mine as well. I squeezed my knees around his ribs, urging him closer. In a moment I could feel his shaft pressing harder against my entrance, a sweet heady weight.

 

My body, wanting and hesitant at once, resisted automatically against such unaccustomed pressure. For a moment I was sure that it was too big, too strange, that it would not go in. Then my Staryk shifted again, and just the tip plunged inside of me.

 

I did not cry out, exactly, but my fast sharp gasp was audible in our marriage chamber. My Staryk jerked to a panicked stop, looking at me with eyes filled with wild concern. But I knew to expect some pain, and the pain was nothing compared to the strange satisfying pleasure of his weight inside me, like nothing I had ever felt before.

 

"Don't stop," I said, panting. "Don't you dare stop, or I will name you a promise-breaker, a wight—"

 

He groaned at the words, deep in his throat, and I grabbed at his hips and pulled him ever deeper within me.

 

At first there was that resistance again, but then it eased, all at once, and the slickness from both of us guided him deep inside me, a long slow slide that ended only when his hips were flush against mine. He was as deep within me as it was possible to go, our bodies entwined so closely that we were one, a single animal with pleasure running through our veins instead of blood.

 

I was almost unbearably full. His thickness seemed to press against every part of me, bringing nerves I didn't even know I had to shuddering life. I was moaning even before he began to thrust. As soon as he did that sensation came again, like a wave sweeping through me, every single part of my body singing with pleasure.

 

I was so slick that it felt as if he was flying, ever movement coming faster than the last.  With every drag he hit that spot inside me, that his fingers had found so well, and the pleasure was enough to roll my eyes back in my head. The delicious friction of our bodied in unison sent warmth shooting through my body. I was crying out every time he bottomed out within me, wanting him even deeper, thicker, wanting him to fill me until there was nothing left. And then, improbably, I felt him begin to shift inside me.

 

He was getting bigger; not at the base, where I still felt tight, but deeper within me, as if he was growing to fit my shape. I looked at his face, startled and not a little alarmed.

 

"What—"

 

I couldn't finish my question. He was expanding deeper and deeper within me, a strange and wonderful sensation, like he was thrusting again when he was still. I rocked into it, moaning, and he buried a groan into my hair. I could feel him shuddering into me, and against me.

 

"Lady," he said. "Would you take in all of me? This is—" he bit back another moan. "This is—an exquisite torture indeed," he finished, gasping.

 

I panted beneath him, not understanding his words in the least. _He_ was the one stretching me out, nearing the limits of even the suppleness of a human body. I could feel him pressing against my inner walls. I was too aware of craving more, but unsure of how much more I could support.

 

"Oh," I said: in realization, but it came out more as a moan. " _Oh_ —"

 

He was beginning to _pulse_ inside me, throbbing instead of thrusting, so I felt his pressure in every direction at once. That strange, impossible pleasure doubled and redoubled with every pulse and I threw my head back as I peaked with pleasure and sensation, that sensation of a wave going through me coming over and over again. My body clamped down around my Staryk, giving him relief at last, and he gasped. The pulsing was growing faster and faster, and I felt he had to be getting close.

 

"Say my name," I said, gasping. "Say my name—"

 

He panted harshly into my skin, his eyes closing.

 

"Miryem," he said at last, as if it were something forbidden, and then he shuddered all over. I felt wetness pooling, held in place by my Staryk, still inside me. He was softening, returning to his original shape and size. I would not have liked to support that pressure much longer, but I could not help wishing impractically that we could stay as we had been forever, with my Staryk inside me, filling me to the brim. I locked my ankles together behind him back, pressing his body against mine for just a moment longer.

 

He stayed with me, his breath light and cold against my cheek. My legs were beginning to ache in unaccustomed places, but I ignored it. His hands were in my hair, and his lips were against my skin.

 

I had imagined a daughter once, imagined telling her of the Staryk king when we heard hunting horns in the distance. I was imagining her again. Her hair would be like mine, but silver, and if ever we heard horns calling in the snowy woods, they would be the vanguard of her father, calling us home.


End file.
